Philip Maddocks: Torre turns down Nobel, heightening speculation he may turn down other offers

Thursday

Oct 25, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 25, 2007 at 6:48 PM

Speculation that Joe Torre may yet turn down another offer from the New York Yankees or Fox television reached a fever pitch yesterday after the former Yankees manager turned down another coveted offer, this one from the selection committee for the Nobel peace prize, who wanted the esteemed baseball skipper included among this year’s

Philip Maddocks

Speculation that Joe Torre may yet turn down another offer from the New York Yankees or Fox television reached a fever pitch yesterday after the former Yankees manager turned down another coveted offer, this one from the selection committee for the Nobel peace prize, who wanted the esteemed baseball skipper included among this year’s recipients.

A close friend of Torre’s sought to downplay talk that the longtime manager would be back to turn down another offer from the Yankees.

"The man's not turning down the Yankees again. Even if he won the Nobel prize for curing cancer, he still wouldn't entertain a second offer from that team — though there most certainly will be one coming," said the colleague. "And I don't know a single serious person in America who thinks Joe will listen to another color commentary offer from Fox."

After turning down the Nobel committee’s offer, Torre returned to his Westchester home, where last night his wife, Ali, said that he would hold a news conference today at a local hotel, "most likely to turn down an offer to run for president or perhaps coach the Miami Dolphins."

"I don’t think the flame is out for Joe," Larry Bowa, the Yankees’ third base coach, said yesterday. "I think he still wants to turn down offers from somewhere."

Al Gore, who elected to accept his Nobel, said he had told Torre what kind of offer the Nobel committee was preparing, and Torre suggested to Gore that he fly to Oslo, Norway, to meet with the committee members in person.

Some of Torre’s former players were surprised that Torre would fly to Oslo if he knew how he was going to reject the Nobel offer, echoing a widely held sentiment. But Gore said Torre was undecided what type of rejection approach to take.

"I asked him on the plane over and I asked him last night on the phone where his mind was at, and he honestly didn’t know," Gore said. "And I can honestly represent to you that on that plane today, and when we were getting off the plane, I was uncertain what direction this was going to go."

Torre met with committee members Gore and Jimmy Carter, another Nobel winner at Jorgens, a café in Oslo named for Arndt Ludwig (Art) Jorgens, a Norwegian-born catcher who played for the New York Yankees from 1929-1939.

The committee members explained the rationale behind their offer to Torre, saying that Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is a human crisis whose actions have the potential to increase the risk of violent conflicts and wars. Of Torre, the committee said: "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted to neutralize the global threat of Steinbrenner."

"Joe was very respectful," Gore said. "He was the dignified man he’s been since all of us have known him. There was no acrimony."

"We kind of thought something was going to happen after Joe didn’t accept the team’s offer," Yankee left fielder Johnny Damon said last night. "They gave Joe an opportunity to accept a Nobel, which was pretty decent.

"But he’d have had to deal with the same adulation and respect he dealt with this year. Maybe Joe just didn’t feel like it anymore."

Scott Boras, the agent for Damon and Alex Rodriguez, told The Associated Press that Torre would have lost respect among the players if he had taken a Nobel after rejecting the Yankees and Fox.

"It is difficult, near impossible, to accept anything after rejecting the Yankees," Boras said. "Successful people can afford their principles. They understand if they accept the award, there is a great risk the message to all under him is satisfaction, and that’s the last thing a manager wants to convey."

Inevitably, Torre’s boldness in turning down the Nobel award has prompted a renewed flurry of conjecture that the former Yankees manager will soon consider turning down a run for the office of president.

Even before yesterday's announcement, the drumbeat had grown audibly louder: among the nationwide coalition of his supporters. Draft Torre this week took out a full-page advertisement on Fox television that exhorted him to stand with the warning that if he did not "rise to this challenge and reject it, you and millions of us will live forever wondering what might have been".

Other influential figures added their voices to the chorus. Jimmy Carter, former president, said in a TV interview that he hoped Torre might be encouraged to "consider another political event." Carter added: "I don't think anyone is better qualified to turn down the office of president of the United States."

Torre himself was studiously avoiding talk of turning down a presidential bid. He maintained the ambivalent stance he has all year — neither in, nor out — in a way that has merely stoked the speculation and aroused further curiosity.

The former Yankees manager would only say, "I'm involved in a different kind of campaign, a global campaign to change the way people think about turning down offers."

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